Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (center) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor(left) speak Aug. 24 in Mineral, Va., with businessman B.J. Singh after his store was damaged by last week’s earthquake. The distribution of disaster-relief funds has caused political backlash in Virginia.

“I believe there’s an appropriate federal role, and the monies will be there,” Cantor told reporters in his district, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In a tweet later in the day, he doubled down on that promise.

“As I’ve said continuously, we will find the monies for disaster relief,” he tweeted.

Cantor churned headlines this week after telling Fox News that congressional lawmakers “are going to have to make sure” that federal aid in response to the storm is accompanied by “savings elsewhere” in the budget.

Asked by Fox on Monday if “any federal money that comes out for Hurricane Irene needs to be met dollar for dollar with spending cuts,” Cantor responded, “Well, yeah.”

“Just like any family would operate when it’s struck with disaster, it finds the money to take care of a sick loved one or what have you, and then goes without trying to buy a new car or [putting] an addition onto the house,” Cantor told Fox.

Cantor’s office softened that position Tuesday, saying Congress should “find offsets whenever possible,” because “that is the responsible thing to do.”

Still, the Fox remarks caught the attention of the White House, which questioned why Cantor didn’t push harder for offsets under the Bush administration, when Republicans ran up trillions of dollars in debt on unfunded programs…..

The next Republican candidates’ debate has long been scheduled for September 7 in California. Today Obama’s office announced his big jobs’ speech will be the same night just before the debate – and it will be delivered to a joint session of Congress. (This is assuming John Boehner permits it – it’s his decision.)

I hope I’m reading this wrong, but I think my prez just effectively shifted the focus from the jobs issue to the politics of the freaky scheduling. And precluded any serious discussion following his speech. It’s all spectator sport now for the political class.

Genealogy trees tend to be a bit, well, technical, and some might whisper dull. Boring even. They sit there informatively enough in a starched, stiff edged sort of way. They usually follow the male line only, generation on generation, producing a tree that resembles something more a portrait, than a landscape. Like mine below.

And while they are clear and informative, they may lose something in this. As readers of this blog will have noted it is the cross connections, the genealogical landscape of a family that is as important as anything.

So it was a delight to be pointed in the direction of Ethan Hein’s innovative web of a family tree shown above. Ethan, a musician, appears as an artist, as much interested in the interconnections that create bands, or styles of music, or which give rise to tunes we all love, as genealogy itself. This leads to his wonderful spider like creations which are as decorative as they are interesting.

A new national poll from Quinnipiac University shows that national races on both the presidential level and for Congress are in a dead heat as Washington prepares to return to work in September. Tex. Gov. Rick Perry now leads the announced GOP field in his quest for the presidential nomination, the first choice of 26 percent of Republican voters, followed by former frontrunner former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney at 20 percent, in what is now the fifth national poll Perry has taken the lead.

The poll also shows that President Obama, whose approval rating has been weakened by a slow economy and general disdain for Washington, is running very closely with both Perry and Romney. Obama leads Perry with 45 percent to the Texas governor’s 42, and ties Romney at 45 percent. Both matchups are within the poll’s margin of error and therefore a statistical dead heat.

You know the endless and annoying hysterical script that goes like this:

OMG Social Security is a Ponzi scheme!

OMG it’s going broke!

OMG people live longer!

OMG fewer workers per retiree!

Et-freacking-cetera.

A little reality:

Social Security has run a surplus since it began

has a trust fund in the trillions

is completely sound for at least 25 more years

cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit, and

life expectancy is a false issue; people today who reach 65 live about the same number of years as earlier generations. (Our stunning achievement in nearly defeating infant mortality is what changed life expectancy figures.)

• SC-Sen: Sen. Jim DeMint reiterated that he has no plans to seek re-election… in 2016. Believe it or not, that makes him the second Republican to broadcast plans this far out, the other being Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn.

• WI-Sen: Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, who last week said he was “99% sure” he’d run for Senate, is now 100%. He confirmed to the Wausau Daily Herald that he’d join the GOP field. If ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson also gets in, I wonder if Fitzgerald and ex-Rep. Mark Neumann might wind up splitting the movement conservative vote, allowing Thompson to sneak through much like Dan Coats did in Indiana last year… though as commenters point out, can Thompson really hang on until September of 2012? Coats had a much shorter primary season.

In 1996, Neumann said, “If I were elected God for a day, homosexuality wouldn’t be permitted.” Years later he clarified the remark, explaining he would not want God’s job.Neumann has also suggested he wouldn’t hire an openly gay staffer. “If somebody walks in to me and says, ‘I’m a gay person, I want a job in your office,’ I would say that’s inappropriate, and they wouldn’t be hired because that would mean they are promoting their agenda,” Neumann said in an address to the Christian Coalition. “The gay and lesbian lifestyle (is) unacceptable, lest there be any question about that.”

Hispanics and Asians led population growth in the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas over the past decade, growing by 41 percent and 43 percent respectively. The population of blacks grew by 12 percent, and the aging white population was largely flat, increasing by less than 1 percent.

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution and the author of the report, also said the United States had reached a demographic milestone: About half of all recent births were to minority parents, a shift that will have broad policy implications in the years to come.

The country’s largest cities are changing the fastest, Dr. Frey said, and provide a snapshot of what the country might look like in the future. Hispanics were 20 percent of the population of large metropolitan areas — defined by the Census Bureau as cities and their suburbs — up from 15 percent in 2000, and 11 percent in 1990. Blacks, the second-largest minority group, accounted for 14 percent of the population of large cities in 2010, unchanged from 2000. Asians totaled 6 percent.

The population increases added 11 million Hispanics to the populations of the largest American cities, nearly 4 million Asians, and 3 million blacks, Dr. Frey said. The number of whites increased by just over 400,000.

“Where these large metro areas are now is where the rest of America is headed,” he said. “The old image of the white and black American population is obsolete.”

The non-Hispanic white population is aging, with the share of women in their childbearing years shrinking. Hispanics, by contrast, are much younger, with a relatively large part of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years.

In large metropolitan areas, the white population represented 57 percent of the total in 2010, down from 71 percent in 1990. Whites accounted for a bigger share in smaller cities, at 73 percent, and in rural areas, at 80 percent, Dr. Frey said….

Romney: Another flip flop? Romney, who previously said he would not attend Jim DeMint’s Presidential forum, now announces that he will be there, after resolving a “scheduling conflict” in New Hampshire.

Palin: Some people just don’t know when to quit. Sarah Palin will fly to New Hampshire on Saturday, after her appearance at an Iowa Tea Party rally. There has been much speculation that she will announce her decision on a Presidential race on Saturday.

Giuliani: Another person who has dragged his decision making for way too long (and I say this as someone who will probably support him if he runs) says he will decide after September 11th.

Huntsman: Could the forming of a pro-Huntsman SuperPac and Fred Davis’ exit to the PAC be a sign that Huntsman’s campaign is running on E?

Perry: RNC Committeeman and nephew of Haley, Henry Barbour sets the bar high for Perry’s fundraising. He said that campaign is on track to raise more than Bush in 2000. Barbour has pledged to raise $500,000 for Perry.

The ‘E’ is new and silent almost, the one place where the agency IS good….

American’s like their guns…

And ATF has ALWAYS been swimming against a political tide in enforcing the nations gun laws…

Some say that is the principal reason that ATF gets kicked around and cut out of funding from Congress…

When the headlines screamed in the last two years about guns and Mexico..

ATFE joined other federal agencies like ICE, and FBI and the US Military in turning it’s resources on that problem…

A TFE ‘buy and bust’ operation got into big trouble when it turned out that it’s special agents where sent out unarmed and uninformed on the people it was working it’s ‘stings’ against…

The last straw was other agencies NOT sharing intel with the ATF people which resulted in a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed…

The temporary head of the beleaguered agency, Kenneth E. Melson, has admitted before Congress that the agency made mistakes….

That is turning into a political liability for the Democratic White House and Melson has been relived….

So has the US Attorney for the district, Dennis Burke, who was also involved in the ‘Fast and Furious ‘operation and his assistant…

The changes follow months of investigations into the agency’s “Operation Fast and Furious.”That now-defunct initiative, which focused on Mexican gun traffickers, resulted in a congressional inquiry after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed in an incident in which Fast and Furious guns were found at the scene.

Law enforcement officials said the personnel moves were the Justice Department’s answer to accusations from congressional Republicans, who have blasted the operation and are pushing to learn whether senior Justice officials in Washington were involved.

Before his resignation, Burke took full responsibility for Fast and Furious in testimony to congressional investigators that was released by House Democrats on Tuesday. “When our office makes mistakes, I need to take responsibility,” he said on Aug. 18. “This is a case . . . it should not have been done the way it was done, and I want to take responsibility for that, and I’m not falling on a sword or trying to cover for anyone else.”

But the personnel moves failed to satisfy the department’s critics on Capitol Hill, who vowed to continue their investigation of Fast and Furious and suggested that other senior officials could be held responsible. The Justice Department’s inspector general is also investigating, at the request of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the changes were “warranted,” but he added that the committee “will continue its investigation to ensure that blame isn’t off-loaded on just a few individuals for a matter that involved much higher levels of the Justice Department.’’

Mitt Romney will speak at a Tea Party Express rally in New Hampshire on Labor Day, his first appearance at a high profile event associated with the movement.

Romney’s scheduled appearance, first reported on CNN, comes as he faces renewed pressure on his right flank thanks to Rick Perry’s surging campaign. Perry was one of the earliest national politicians to jump on the grassroots bandwagon — he made his famous“secession” comments at a Tea Party rally in April 2009 — and is currently polling very well with self-identified Tea Partiers. He, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain will attend a forum with the Tea Party-leaning Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) in South Carolina on Labor Day.

The Perry poll numbers may do all the HEAVY LIFTING for the White House for 2012….

(AP)

The epidemic of lefty angst isn’t just a matter of specific Perry policies though; it goes to the heart of the liberal worldview. His smashing debut on the presidential stage suggests that the victory of an urban liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, wasn’t a step toward a more progressive nation, but just a leftward swing of an increasingly wild pendulum, now poised to rocket to the right.

“His entry in the race is a signal and a wake-up call,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told POLITICO.

Perry, Sharpton said, “is looking to go to the O.K. Corral and start shooting. … Rather than the left get caught sleeping, we better load up, because he is bringing it.”

For Democrats, the pre-Perry GOP primary process was hardly for the faint of heart, as the other candidates have jockeyed to show who dislikes Obama the most. But even as the primary is fought on conservative turf, liberal leaders say they and their constituents see Perry as far worse than your average, hated Republican, and indeed as bad — if not worse — than his hated predecessor in Austin, George W. Bush. And progressives who might have had a hard time getting worked up about Mitt Romney find themselves struggling for superlatives with which to express their fear of a President Perry.

“His work as governor is unparalleled in its frontal assault on women,” said Siobhan Bennett, the president of the Women’s Campaign Forum, citing statistics on women living in poverty and without health care in Texas and Perry’s active opposition to abortion. “He has gone farther out on a limb legislatively in his capacity as governor and has been expressly anti-woman in the legislation he has done.”

“He is beyond what we expect from conservative Republicans on the gun issue,” said Dennis Henigan, the acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who cited Perry’s support for gun rights on college campuses and said it was a sharp contrast with Romney’s “moderate” record. Perry’s rise, he said, had already become “a strong mobilizing force” for gun control activists, whose agenda has been largely ignored by the Obama administration.

“People are perceiving a very real threat that he could be the Republican nominee,” said Henigan, calling the prospect “quite frightening.”

Thompson, who is expected to make his Bid official next week can now breath a little bit easier as Fitzgerald will also run to his right therefore likely splitting the Vote with Neumann making it more likely that Thompson will be the Republican Nominee for the General Election in 2012….